Doctrine of Lapse and subsidiary alliance

Two tools let the British expand without fighting for every acre.

The first was the Doctrine of Lapse: any princely state would be taken over (annexed) if its ruler died without a natural male heir.

The unfairness is in the word 'natural'. Indian royal families had long used adoption as a proper way of passing on the throne. The Doctrine deliberately ignored that tradition, so a state with a perfectly proper adopted heir could still be taken.

A princely state was a region still ruled by an Indian prince, maharaja or nawab, which had accepted British protection and guidance in exchange for running its own internal affairs. At Independence there were over 500 of them, covering about 40 per cent of the subcontinent.

The Doctrine led to many annexations, caused deep resentment, and helped cause the 1857 Rebellion.

The second tool was the 'subsidiary alliance'. A British 'Resident' was placed in an Indian ruler's court to 'protect' him against threats from inside or outside.

In exchange, the ruler had to keep British troops at his own expense and deal with other powers only through the British. Read that carefully: the ruler paid for the soldiers who held him in place, and lost the right to make his own alliances.

So it seemed to keep a state independent while handing real power to the British, and it made Indian rulers pay the costs of their own subjugation. Hyderabad was among the first, in 1798. The British called the result 'an empire on the cheap', and once a state joined, leaving was almost impossible.